Cruising the Mediterranean on S/V Olive

Back in the Water/X marks the spot

It’s been a busy couple of days so I’m going to do W and X together. We spent yesterday getting the sails back on the boat and attaching everything we took off last year. It looks really good having been washed and polished and antifouled.

I went along to the Customs to get our transit log back. It was easy this year. Just had to fake Andy’s signature and all was done. There was a brief moment when the Customs Officer wanted proof that we’d left the country – there are no stamps in our passports and I had no tickets to show we’d left or come back – but he shrugged and said with a smile that he was far too busy today and to bring proof next year. We shook hands conspiratorially.

Dimitri the Crane arrived bright and early this morning and we were soon back in the water, everything ship shape and Bristol fashion.

This has to be the seventh or eighth time I’ve watched our boats taken out or put in the water and it’s always exciting. Dimitri is a Master of his craft and plucks Olive from the middle of a crowd of boats narrowly missing our friends’ boat, Seaesta Blue, next to us.

This looks like it’s touching but there is a fender between them! And it’s not Seaesta Blue, Peter!

He pops Olive onto the back of his truck………

……. and trundles off down to the Quay.

This is the anxious moment. We’ve all seen the videos where they drop a brand new multi million dollar boat into the water….

..but he hits the spot perfectly helped enormously by Andy holding a bit of rope!